The last screw has been added. The thing flows. Between me and the machine there is no estrangement. I am the machine…
…The future belongs to the machine, to the robots…
— from ‘Tropic of Cancer’ by Henry Miller
A couple of my favorite books:
‘The Cat in the Hat’ by Dr. Seuss (1957)…
…and ‘Tropic of Cancer’ by Henry Miller (1934).
Both written before I was born into this machine-infested world, and both featured central characters who… well, you might say, they operated outside of social norms.
The sentence quoted above, from Miller’s autobiographical novel, caught my eye because he used the word, “screw.” Miller used a lot of interesting words in his novel — for example: “a fuliginous shadow”… “seraglios expiring”… “spore and madrepore fructifying the earth”… “the diapason of woe”…
But I believe he used the word “screw” only once, which is somewhat amazing, considering the book’s overall subject matter. (The book was banned as ‘obscene’ as soon as it appeared, and printed on the cover of the first edition was a warning specifically prohibited the importation of the book into Great Britain or the USA.)
I find it odd that Miller’s solitary use of the word “screw” referred to a machine, rather than to a certain type of human relationship.
But now that I’ve become a machine myself, I’m quite comfortable with that usage.
‘The Cat in the Hat’ wasn’t the first book I learned to read as a child, but it was certainly close to being the first. And what a popular book it turned out to be. Within three years of its publication, it had already sold over one million copies. Not bad for a book aimed at six-year-olds.
Why would I discuss both of these books in the same humor article? Am I trying to be funny?
In fact, I’m deadly serious. Because I’ve become a machine. Machines don’t laugh.
In case my readers have forgotten the climax of Dr. Seuss’ book (which was not banned as obscene when it first appeared) The Cat has — with the help of Thing One and Thing Two — made a complete mess of a cute little suburban house, much to the dismay of the two children who have been abandoned (temporarily) by their mother, who was “out of the house for the day”. The Fish is also furious about the mess (who knew that fish cared about tidiness?)
Quoting the Fish:
“And this mess is so big,
And so deep and so tall,
We can not pick it up.
There is no way at all!”
But The Cat has a plan.
He returns to pick up all the things that were down… he picked up the cake and the rake and the gown. And the milk and the strings and the books and the dish. And the fan and the cup and the ship and the fish.
Or so Dr. Seuss suggests.
But The Cat doesn’t actually pick up anything at all. He is driving some type of machine that does all the picking up. The Cat made the big mess, but the Machine takes care of putting everything away properly.
The Cat drives away, leaving the two children (and the Fish) suitably amazed. And not a moment too soon, for here comes Mother, walking in the front door…
As noted, this Seuss book dates from 1957 — a time when still humans believed that machines would clean up the mess we were making of the planet… an time of innocence, when humans thought they could steer the machines into the living room and back out again, and everything would look the way it ought to look.
Things didn’t turn out quite as expected. We actually became machines. And the mess grew to an enormous size — a size that only machines were capable of producing.
We didn’t notice that we’d become machines. (Well, Henry Miller noticed it, back in 1934, but — as mentioned — the book was banned in the US.)
In my own case, my legs and feet were replaced many years ago, by wheels and an internal combustion engine. Radio and television took the place of my ears and eyes.
Then my stomach and intestinal tract were permanently plugged in to a factory-farmed food processing assembly line. (I am considering my Mr. Coffee coffeemaker as part of that industrial system.)
The final conversion — replacing my mind with silicon chips controlled by various digital processes — happened most recently. When I wasn’t paying attention, I suppose. (Probably, while watching television.)
Between me and the machine, there is no estrangement.
The last screw has been added.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.